Female Entrepreneurship: Challenges, Steps in Becoming, and Men's Role (podcast)

Ladies, welcome to our fourth episodes of FP Guru Series with Patricia Becker. In today's episode, we interviewed Patricia  - the founder of Future Women X and a corporate "refugee", who worked for over 20 years with prominent companies including Coca-Cola, Transavia Airlines, and ING Bank.

How does it feel to be a female entrepreneur? What are the most common challenges female entrepreneurs face? What is men's role in female leadership? How can they change it? Answers on these and other questions you will find in our latest podcast. Listen to the episode here:

The website of Patricia - www.futurewomenx.com/

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION:

Una: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Fashion Potluck Podcast sessions. Fashion Potluck is a women driven platform, where women can post engage and interact with each other. My name is Una. I'm the Content Manager of Fashion Potluck and I'm here with Julia the Chief Marketing Officer of Fashion Potluck. And our guest for today is Patricia Becker - the Co-Founder and Chief Future Maker of Future Women X. Good morning. 

Patricia: Good morning. 

Una: Welcome, Patricia. So today we're gonna be talking about interesting topics of female leadership, female entrepreneurship, and women empowerment in general. So, Patricia, we have the first question for you. So could you tell us a bit more about who you are and what is Future Women X?

Patricia: [00:00:45] Well, good morning to everybody. My name is Patricia Becker. I'm 51. So that is I think double of average millennial age and how I got here being an entrepreneur of a global platform is that I'm a corporate refugee, as I like to call myself. I had a career in corporate life and at some point, I decided that I wanted to pay forward what I missed myself in those leadership positions. I thought let's do it myself. So, what I do now or what we have now is a global organization, where we are solely working for women in order to help them and guide him throughout their whole career.

Una: [00:01:32] Okay, interesting. But what encouraged you to go in the direction of entrepreneurship?

Patricia: [00:01:37] Well actually, let me put it this way. I was on a rather steep career and there was a certain point where I thought, "OK what's next?". Is it to be CEO of a company or whatever there's an opportunity. But I thought: "Can I do it myself?". Can I really really do it myself and build a company from scratch, and survive, and be relevant. That was a big temptation.

Julia: [00:02:15] So that's why you decided to create Future Women X?

Patricia: [00:02:17] Yeah.

Julia: [00:02:17] You didn't have a company before that?

Patricia: [00:02:20] I was what they call here in Holland an interim director, so I was hired, but I felt that wasn't really entrepreneurship. Not really. I did it for a few years with amazing companies like Coca-Cola and ING bank. But to really build something and prove to myself and to the world that I could do that - that was beyond challenge for me.

Una: [00:02:48] So you just quit your job and you started your own company?

Patricia: [00:02:51] Yes. I also worked for an American Multinational as a general manager for two years, but it was in the height of the crisis in 2008. So, that ended and then I sit on my kitchen table and really thought OK I can fix this. I can find myself an amazing new job or boost my career again and start all over. But I can also use this time wisely to really figure out what I had to do with myself. So, I challenged myself to slow down, which was extremely scary. So, and I wanted to slow down to figure out what my real speed could be. To really reflect. So, I set a few months at my kitchen table and then I really connected to - this is my passion. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And, so here we are.

Julia: [00:03:49] Yeah. Here we are. So, how old is Future Women X now?

Patricia: [00:03:52] That's interesting. We named the company Future Women X last year because my first company was called Career Generators. I started that myself.

Julia: [00:04:02] So, it wasn't only for women?

Patricia: [00:04:04] It was always just for women. Maybe I will share a bit more on why later. So, I did that for 10 years and I started on my own. So, I really did it the hard way because what I wanted to do is to guide women throughout their careers, not to be paid solely or be selected by their company. I wanted to just work for her. So, I gave myself four years to figure out how can I build a practice, because that's the hard way. It's much easier to be the preferred supplier of a multinational and such but I thought, I didn't want it myself. So I'm not going to do it now. I'm the benchmark for whatever I want to create. And, a few years later I found myself having peers as well. And, peers what I mean by that is that I've found other women who did the same work, maybe from a different angle, and we cooperated and we started doing international projects.

Julia: [00:05:04] And, these are your current co-founders as well?

Patricia: [00:05:06] Yes.These are my current co-founders.

Una: [00:05:09] Okay. That's pretty exciting. But I wonder did you have support when you decided to do something completely different?

Patricia: [00:05:17] Apart from friends, who thought I was crazy?

Listen to the full podcast in the player above.

As well, the episode is available at the major podcast platforms - SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, CastBox, OverCast and others.

About Patricia: 

Patricia embodies and inspires the power of Sisterhood. As an all-around, seasoned business leader specializing in multilevel change programs for multinationals like ING Bank, Coca Cola, Transavia Airline, and Kelly Services, and as an entrepreneur in SME environments, she intimately understands the challenges and ambitions of female leaders. Patricia leads with her incurable curiosity for what’s next. 

 As a trusted advisor, business and executive coach, and dialogue-maker for women globally over the last decade, Patricia dares to create spaces to have bold and profound conversations on the topics that matter most and leverage collective wisdom to challenge leaders to continually renew themselves & be future-makers. Read more about what she does and  FutureWomenX here.  

Happy listening! 

Love,

The Fashion Potluck Team